The Student Room Group
The difference is in how the cards are processed... Visa Electron transactions must be authorized by your bank before it goes ahead... Visa debit cards allow automatically the first £20 of a transaction before seeking authorization..
Reply 4
shorty.loves.angels

i purposly asked this question on tsr so i could get other peoples explanations, i am aware of wiki and ive looked at it
thanks
Reply 5
DuncanMono
The difference is in how the cards are processed... Visa Electron transactions must be authorized by your bank before it goes ahead... Visa debit cards allow automatically the first £20 of a transaction before seeking authorization..

thanks t would you either one is better than the other
east
thanks t would you either one is better than the other


Visa Debit is significantly better than an Electron. It is much more widely accepted, particularly abroad. You can use it for offline transactions and generally it works better.
east
thanks t would you either one is better than the other

If you're not so good with your money I would say visa electron is better as it's harder to get in trouble with the banks. Otherwise, go for visa debit...
Reply 8
thank everyone for your replies
Yeh the last reply by DuncanMono sums it up quite well. If you pay bills and stuff from your account then debit card is obviously ideal. Electron is better for people who want money to come in and go out when they want... like a young person who starts to have a bank account would, if that's a good comparison? I had an electron when I was 14 or whatever and it was good because I couldn't go overdrawn or buy things that I couldn't afford.

Sorry about last post, your question was quite straight forward so I thought you just wanted to know the simple differences, which wikipedia gives.

I guess it depends what you want it for.
Reply 10
shorty.loves.angels
Yeh the last reply by DuncanMono sums it up quite well. If you pay bills and stuff from your account then debit card is obviously ideal. Electron is better for people who want money to come in and go out when they want... like a young person who starts to have a bank account would, if that's a good comparison? I had an electron when I was 14 or whatever and it was good because I couldn't go overdrawn or buy things that I couldn't afford.

Sorry about last post, your question was quite straight forward so I thought you just wanted to know the simple differences, which wikipedia gives.

I guess it depends what you want it for.

that ok
now im just wondering why my bank santander did not give me a visa debit card when i turned 18 even though i have been with them since i was 16 and had a visa electronic card back then too,but natwest gave me one straight away
east
that ok
now im just wondering why my bank santander did not give me a visa debit card when i turned 18 even though i have been with them since i was 16 and had a visa electronic card back then too,but natwest gave me one straight away


Do you know when your visa electron expires? Maybe they might change it to a debit card after it has expired :confused:.
They might be waiting for you to change it? despite what they say sometimes they assume you'll change if/ when you want
Reply 13
The main difference between these two cards are the way they're processed, Visa Debit uses the former Delta network (whenever you see the Delta sign, it means that Visa Debit is accepted there as well because existing systems have not yet been updated to accept the card natively as if it were any other Visa card) whilst Visa Electron uses a separate network, so look out for differences in signage because when you see the plain-old Visa sign, it doesn't necessarily mean that Visa Electron is accepted there
Reply 14
shorty.loves.angels
They might be waiting for you to change it? despite what they say sometimes they assume you'll change if/ when you want

i tried to get this changed a few months back but the women said i would only be able to have a visa debit card if i earn a certain income , which i thought was a bit odd to be honest

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